Quick Tip Tuesday: The Skull, Spine, and Sacrum.
It's One Unit
We'll get to the anatomy in a sec! For the moment,
consider the dolphin leaping from the water.
Does the fin change shape? Does it get longer and
shorter? Does it move headward or tailward?
In this conceptual image for riding, the dolphin is the
horse and the fin is the rider.
How the Horse's Back Moves
If you put a dot on a horse's back and trace its
movements, it will look like a wave. Of some
sort. Maybe not a beautiful wave that gently rolls up
and down, but still it could be thought of as a wave.
How the Rider's Tailbone Moves (hopefully!)
How the Rider's Sternum Moves
How the Rider's Top Noggin Moves
All Together
A rather nice example of the hips, back,
and head moving as a unit is shown here by several riders of The
Spanish Riding School.
But What About "Absorbing the Motion?!"
So, I went looking for some clips and got sidetracked and
then thought, 'well, who wants to be the example of what not
to do?' Yeah, I'm not raising my hand either!
Basically, 'back in the day,' I got coached into something
that kind of looked like 'belly dancing.' The
hips were in front and kind of going up and down like crazy
while the head was sailing along at about the same height
from the ground. The back, meanwhile, was doing some
kind of accordion thing similar to cat/cow.
So, some anatomy?
The Spine is comprised of 26 bones, give or take, and
can, of course, move like an accordion. On the horse,
though, this is not optimal.
The occipital bone is the bottom of the skull and can be
considered a special extension of the spine. The spine
and the occipital bone communicate through two occipital
condyles - two rockers, on the bottom of the occipital bone
that sit in two grooves on the top of C1.
And then there's the sacrum, which used to be 5 vertebrae
until they fused together at by age 28 or so.
Disclaimer: I got lost on the internet again. >
sigh < I think I'm trying to find something I saw in
a class. (Maybe check out your chiro's office?!)
Here's the closest I've found:
While the spine has the capacity to flex and extend, like
our leg joints, we want our spine to be free and released so
that it is able to respond. We don't want hinges
flapping about. We don't want a rod and we
don't want a noodle. We want something in between.
Just enough integrity to retain the general shape.
My check for this: is my head
traveling equidistant and directly above (like perpendicular)
to where my tailbone is above the horse's back?
Am I like a dorsal fin?
Your turn!
Let me know how this goes for you! I didn't share
imagery for this. Sally always talked about being a
marionette suspended from above. That never made sense
to me! Then I saw the WII characters. LOL!
Lynn
5/16/23
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